Off The Rails
by Right What Is Wrong
Summary: Amaryllis Potter walks into the Great Hall to present her public petition for emancipation, but things soon spiral out of control beyond even what she anticipated. Oneshot. Fem!Harry. Some Dumbledore-bashing.


**Author's Note** : Yes, it's the "Harry complains of his treatment" genre, with fem!Harry. Was originally going to be part of a larger story, then blew up to such a size that I figured it stood on its own.

* * *

As the Hogwarts students sat down to breakfast, chatting away and waiting for the owls to deliver the latest gossip-filled edition of the Daily Prophet, a small _bang_ came from the entrance to the Great Hall.

They reflexively, as one, looked over to find a short, bespectacled girl with curly, dark-red hair holding up her wand, a small curl of smoke drifting from the tip. "Now that I've got your attention." She cleared her throats and began:

"I, Amaryllis Lily Potter, as the last of the most ancient and noble house of Potter-"

The more knowledgeable in the Hall sat up straighter: while "most ancient and noble" was not a formal title, it was an formulaic phrase acknowledging respect for the old traditions. This was more than just an attention-seeking exercise, then.

"-being in extraordinary circumstances, engaged in an active blood feud with a Dark Lord-"

That brought agitated whispers from the students, especially the ones at the Slytherin table: was Potter claiming - or revealing - the survival of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? One couldn't have a blood feud with the dead!

"-subject to guardians guilty of the most extreme dereliction of duty-"

Those who understood the formula were shocked, and wondered if Potter actually knew what she was saying: "the _most_ extreme dereliction of duty", referring to guardians, meant that her guardians had gone beyond mere incompetence or neglect and headed well into malice. It was the realm, to be blunt, of relatives attempting to kill their wards for the inheritance. It was also a charge never leveled without proof.

The combination of "last of my house" and the accusations towards her guardians also implied this was heading in an interesting direction.

"-and engaged in a tournament well known to place its contestants in mortal peril, do therefore make public my petition to take up the rights and responsibilities of an adult, so that I may be free to act as I judge necessary to ensure the survival and prosperity of my house." She bowed stiffly at the waist. "This petition has been sent also to the Ministry, so that it may be examined and, if the august body of the Wizengamot should deem it proper, granted with all speed. For doing me the honor of witnessing my petition, I give thanks to all present and wish good fortune upon each of you, and upon your house, in turn." She straightened. "Well, good to have that out of the way," she said in a more normal voice. "Now-"

"Miss Potter," the headmaster said from the other end of the Hall, "I am extraordinarily disappointed in you." Those students looking in his direction saw him shaking his head gravely. "This is an extremely immature and childish attempt to seek out attention, cause a most unnecessary fuss, and unfairly slander _your last living relatives, who took you in despite great hardship."_ The stress he placed on those last words was well-understood by those with knowledge of what was going on: he was counter-accusing her of having neither familial loyalty nor gratitude, which would leach the strength from her claim to be requesting adult authority out of commitment to her house.

Since he was Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, it was also as good as saying he'd deny the petition.

"Now, Miss Potter, _take your seat_ ; we will discuss your misbehavior _la_ -"

"BOLLOCKS!"

The profane shout had everyone turning towards the source: a tall redhead who rose, shaking, from his seat, and pointed a finger at the headmaster. "Great hardship?" he spat; by now, most had recognized him as Ronald Weasley, Potter's best friend before their recent falling out. "Great hardship for _her_ , you mean! They put _bars_ on her windows!"

"Mr. Weasley-"

"He's telling the truth, Headmaster," one of the infamous Weasley twins interjected, rising from his seat as well.

"You know he is!" shouted the other twin, standing. "We told our parents, and they told you! You said it was _regrettable_ and you would _look further into the matter_! And now you're _defending_ them?"

"Thought you'd fallen out with her, Weasley?" a blond boy called from the Hufflepuff table.

"This has got nothing to do with what I think of her! We had to _break her out_ of her own _home!_ "

"Thank you, Ronald," Potter said, her voice stiffly neutral, giving him a short nod. "Similarly leaving out what I think of you, I'm glad to that _someone_ retains some _decency_." As she spoke, she turned and looked pointedly toward the headmaster. "Thanks to you, too, Fred and George. I wondered what happened after that..."

"All of this is a _private_ dispute which should be settled _between the affected parties_ ," the headmaster said sternly, his usual persona of the kindly grandfather dropping away; now he sounded like a harsh patriarch, laying down the law upon an unruly and ill-mannered family. "I apologize to the students who have had their meals disrupted by this spectacle-"

"Are you kidding me?" a firstie squealed from the Ravenclaw table. "This is better than my mum's legal thrillers!" She was quickly shushed by her peers, but amidst the muffled laughter at both her table and the Slytherin one were guilty smiles and knowing looks.

"-and," said the headmaster, continuing on unruffled, "I hope we may all resume our daily activities in the decent and orderly manner expected from students of this school."

"That might be a mite difficult," Potter said from the other end of the hall. She pointed to the owls flocking into the hall with their mail. "You see, I _thought_ I might be challenged on the dereliction of duty..."

She reached up as one swooped down to her, and pulled a rolled-up newspaper free of the ribbon tied to its leg. She unfurled it, then recoiled from it, cursed under her breath, and gave a pained smile to the Hall. "Well," she said, forcing a chuckle as she looked back at the newspaper, "I ought to tell you all I only gave the tip - I didn't write the article..."

As the mail owls flocked around the tables, submitting to the removals of their burdens, Daily Prophet subscribers were greeted with the cause of Potter's consternation:

 _ **POTTER HOUSE OF HORROR!** _

**EVIL MUGGLES BRAG OF ABUSING THE GIRL SAVIOR!**

 **THE SHOCKING CONDITIONS IN WHICH THE GIRL-WHO-LIVED WAS RAISED! **

**RITA SKEETER'S MOST DARING INVESTIGATION YET!**

Splashed across the front page was a picture of a cupboard in disrepair, with a bony, horse-faced woman gesturing dismissively into it; a blonde, green-clad woman whom news aficionados knew to be Rita Skeeter was visible at the edge of the photograph, alternately peering into the cupboard and turning back to the photographer, shooting a horrified glance at him before schooling her features into neutral interest and turning back to the cupboard. The source of her shock was clear: there was a small, broken-down cot stuffed inside, which clearly had once been used, though it was now occupied by nothing more than a few picture was helpfully captioned **"Yes, that's where we kept the freak."**

"I wasn't expecting her to - make quite such a big deal of it," Potter said lamely, then looked down at her copy. She closed her eyes and sighed. "I don't see any inaccuracies, though."

The next several minutes were starkly silent, punctuated only by the occasional exclamation of disgust, as the students huddled around the available copies. The few which had gone to the teachers' table received equal attention, though in a somewhat more orderly fashion, if about as much revulsion.

Professor Snape, in particular, began reading with a sneer, obviously ready to dismiss everything he read as hysteria and confabulation; then he let out a strangled noise that might have been " _Petunia?_ ", buried his nose in the paper, and was very quiet and still, moving only to turn the page. When he raised his head from the Prophet at last, he turned toward the headmaster, and his face was like thunder.

* * *

The actual article opened with Rita Skeeter being requested to meet with Amaryllis Potter in Hogsmeade, and the reporter, "always even-handed", naturally consenting to the appointment. Upon arriving, Potter complained of her treatment in the prior article, saying that Skeeter had misunderstood her meaning in their prior interview and she "didn't have much time to be concerned with what [her] parents might think of [her] growing up, being more concerned with whether [she'd] get to _eat_ that week".

A "naturally appalled" Skeeter had asked her meaning, and been told, "tears of pain and sorrow glimmering in those striking emerald eyes", to seek out her relatives ("address omitted, dear readers, for reasons that will become apparent") and learn from _them_ what she meant. "This intrepid reporter" had "lain a comforting hand on the miserable child's frail frame", then set off to discover what she might mean.

(At this point, the Slytherins began to wager among themselves exactly how many Galleons had incentivized that "intrepid" investigation, then went silent as they proceeded to the next section.)

Arriving at the neighborhood in question, Skeeter had swiftly located Potter's relatives and spent a few days determining what guise might be best to get them to drop their guard. Posing as a writer for a Muggle homes-and-gardens magazine, she informed Potter's aunt that their house had been specially selected as the subject of her next article ("which, clever readers will realize, was not quite a lie") and asked to come in and interview her. Though they had started out with idle chitchat and talk about the actual home, Skeeter had soon "ingeniously persuaded her" to open up, alluding to the existence of the magical world (while implying she herself was a fellow Muggle) and asking if her "delinquent" niece had _really_ gone off to " _that_ school".

At this point, everyone aware of the realities of the world understood implicitly that Skeeter had probably dosed the woman with Veritaserum or used some other variety of inhibition-lowering magic. It would become increasingly clear over the course of the article, as even the most hateful woman alive would have realized that her admissions were nearly suicidal - even if she feared no Wizarding justice, a truncated version of her remarks would be enough to land her in a very unpleasant situation with Muggle authorities. Even Skeeter herself seemed to all but admit it, with sly allusions to "loosening her tongue", but it was as though she were challenging the reader: even if she had done such a thing - in light of what she'd found out, what jury would convict her?

According to Potter's aunt, the girl had appeared on her doorstep in a swaddled bundle one frigid morning, making her scream and spill the milk. "It was an omen of what was to come," the woman had remarked darkly, for the girl had been nothing but trouble for them for the next ten years. How, exactly, was unclear, unless it was her mere presence provoking the woman's unmitigated loathing for all things magic. Here Skeeter noted she had abridged the woman's remarks for the sake of length, but the ranting Skeeter retained portrayed a woman mortally sick with envy of her far prettier, cleverer, and more talented sister, who had also happened to be a witch; after settling down and starting a family herself, the woman had consecrated herself on the altar of proud mediocrity, only to be driven over the edge by the appearance of her orphaned niece, who would swiftly prove to be far better-looking, smarter, and more talented than the woman's own son.

The woman and her husband (who arrived home during her rantings, and, after being persuaded to "sit down and have some tea", soon joined his wife in uninhibited prolixity) set out to teach the girl her place, locking her in a cupboard beneath the stairs ("So she would know she was only fit to be beneath our feet!" the woman snarled with the characteristic deranged honesty of Veritaserum overdose), occasionally starving her to "teach her discipline", and setting her to perform every chore in the household: "By the age of eight," wrote Skeeter, "Amaryllis Potter was, in a very real sense, the Dursley House-Elf." Though Potter had an escape from their maltreatment in Muggle primary school, her relatives had refused to allow her even a temporary refuge; they set their son ("a straw-haired youth whose lovingly-tended photographs reminded this reporter unaccountably of a woodcut she had glimpsed in her Potions text as a schoolgirl, vividly warning against the effects of Swelling Solution ingestion") to beat her in the schoolyard, blackballed her to her teachers, and ensured no child would want to be her friend. The sheer _pettiness_ of their cruelty, as Skeeter noted, was appalling.

Nor did her relatives show the slightest remorse: as far as they were concerned, it was nothing more than they were owed for having to deal with her at all. Indeed, her uncle opined that he might have "driven the freakishness" from her if he'd ever overcome his "sentimental squeamishness" and beaten her himself. ("At that instant," Skeeter confided, "between his shameless proclamation and his mention of his son's "hunts" of the girl, I was seized with the impression that I had been flung backwards through the centuries, and before me sat a career witch-hunter, beady eyes dancing and jowls quivering with glee as he spoke of the horrors he had inflicted upon his latest hapless victim.") Instead, they had been "soft", and thus she had received her Hogwarts letter after all.

"A naive reader" might think they would have been glad to be rid of her, if her mere presence were truly such a burden. But, in their envious spite, they had gone on "a wild chase" to avoid the Hogwarts owls. At last, they had fled to a hut on a tiny, rocky island (though even Rita Skeeter was driven to noting they _must_ have exaggerated this point), only to have the door bashed down by an oversized man who had rescued Potter from their grasp and taken her off to the Wizarding world, returning her shortly to them with threats if they should attempt to harm her again. (Skeeter noted that their burglar matched the description of one Rubeus Hagrid, groundskeeper of Hogwarts, current teacher of Care of Magical Keepers, and a known Dumbledore partisan.) The hard-hearted Muggles, at this point, were driven to tears as they described how their assailant had... cursed their son with a pig's tail.

"Listening to their weeping over the most minor of cosmetic defects, after the decade of abuse they had heaped upon their piteous, waif-like niece with no more reaction than a sneer and a chuckle," Skeeter wrote, "this reporter, even hardened as she has been by a lengthy career of the most shocking exposés, was almost driven wholly from the home by an overwhelming surge of disgust."

Nonetheless, she had forced herself on in order to wrap up the tale. The time after Potter's departure for Hogwarts was mostly uneventful, though Skeeter noted that, once the girl's "daring bluff" that she could use magic at home was revealed as a fraud, she had been locked in her new room with bars on the windows. Potter's second warning for underage magic, as it turned out, had been in response to extreme provocation from her uncle's sister, who had been insinuating in poorly-veiled language that Potter's mother was a "bitch" and the girl herself should have been drowned at birth. This past summer had been rather better for Potter, fortunately, as she seemed to have found a family friend with whom to intimidate her relatives.

(The sudden, uncharacteristic lack of detail had people wondering if Skeeter had received a bribe to omit the man's identity, or was holding out for one.)

Skeeter had wrapped up by turning the conversation back to the Muggles' home, and had her photographer extensively document the house, as promised. Including ones of the cupboard and Potter's current bedroom, which still bore the scars upon its window where the bars had been, and a cat-flap in the door, which had been the method of food-delivery during her imprisonment after her first year at Hogwarts.

After Skeeter bid a farewell to the Muggles (who the photographer had captured standing on their porch, smiling pleasantly and waving farewell with glazed looks in their eyes), the article closed with a barely-restrained rant on the failures of the government's supervision of magical children, and a question of how they could have failed the Girl-Who-Lived so badly as to permit her to grow up under circumstances unfit for a dog.

* * *

There was stunned silence in the Hall.

It was broken, uncharacteristically, by Professor Snape.

"I was under the impression, Dumbledore," he said, in a quiet voice that somehow carried across the Great Hall, "that you had taken Miss Potter under your personal protection. She has, after all, seemed always to be your favorite student... I thought you rather liked her role in the Dark Lord's defeat..."

Standing suddenly, he strode over to the headmaster, whose face was like stone, and shoved the Prophet in his face. "What _is_ this?" he spat. "Do not tell me you had no idea - you, who advertise yourself as all-knowing, and wise beyond us common scum?" His voice was rising; he shook the newspaper wildly before the headmaster's eyes, as though he might abruptly haul back and punch the old man in the face. "Is this what you call _protection,_ Dumbledore? Was the idea that, if the Dark Lord showed up at her front door to seek revenge, he might take one look and go away, because he could not do better?" A gasp from the students, followed by a few mutters of agreement. "Is this the quality of _protection_ you offered to her _parents?_ Because, if so, I well understand how the Dark Lord-"

"You go too far, Severus," the headmaster said in a tired voice, and his gesture of dismissal was uncharacteristically sharp. "I would think you, of all people, would know better than to believe everything you read -"

"I KNOW PETUNIA EVANS!"

The professor's scream took everyone aback; while the Potions Professor's temper was well-known, his losing control - particularly in public - was most uncharacteristic. A few from the Slytherin table were heard to wonder aloud if that could really be their Head of House.

His torso shuddering as though he had run a marathon, the professor controlled himself and looked back at the students. "As I said," he said in clipped tones, "I had the grave misfortune to make the acquaintance of the woman described in this article in my youth." The sneer that contorted his face could be seen all the way across the Hall. "Everything therein is entirely in keeping with her character," he spat, tossed the paper in the headmaster's face, and walked back to his chair, from which he proceeded to radiate such pure hatred that his colleagues on either side subtly shifted their seats to give him a wider berth.

At last, Amaryllis Potter herself cleared her throat. "I admit," she said, looking rather red in the face and discomfited, "I thought she was going to write a _report_ , not a biography." She shook her head. "Nonetheless, I think that acts as my proof that my relatives engaged in the most extreme dereliction of duty, don't you?"

"Potter," a red-haired girl spoke up from the Hufflepuff table, "if even half of what is written here is true-"

"All of it, unfortunately," Amaryllis said shortly.

"-you need to follow up with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. There are still laws on the books _specifically_ dealing with persecution of magical children by Muggles -"

"Miss Bones, I _also_ advise you to not believe everything you read," the headmaster announced, seemingly unperturbed by being harangued before the Great Hall and having a newspaper thrown literally in his face. Then again, no one could quite figure out what option he had left. After his defense of her relatives, a sudden reversal and tearful remorse would provoke more laughter than sympathy. An admission of guilt or incompetence would be tantamount to his resignation from most of his posts - if he did not leave himself, he would be _driven_ out. Brazen denial was the only path that remained to him... but for how long?

One of the Slytherin prefects stood, his head held high. "Do you at least believe the words, _Headmaster_ ," he called, his voice loud and dangerous, "which form the statutes instructing us on how we shall deal with those who turn upon their own kind, and give aid and comfort to _witch-hunters?_ "

There was a sharp intake of breath across the Great Hall; there was no worse accusation in Wizarding law. Even He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, in his most savage rhetoric, had only alluded to the policies of "blood-traitors" leading, out of _foolishness_ , down a path that would someday _effectively_ aid the reborn witch-hunts that were to come; never had he gone so far as to call his enemies turncoats outright. It would have repulsed even the most fanatical of his followers. To make a false accusation of aiding witch-hunters was the _second_ -most serious crime in the magical world - second, because to have truly done so was infinitely worse.

And yet no one could deny that, if the article was true and Dumbledore had known, his action - or lack thereof - was exactly that.

"You know nothing of which you speak!" Professor McGonagall shouted back, her voice surging with uncharacteristic rage. "How _dare -_ Resume your seat, Mr. Fawley! You will _apologize_ to the headmaster immediately!"

"I heard no insult, Minerva," Professor Snape said quietly, looking up from the food he had not touched since he returned to his seat. "He only asked whether the headmaster believed what he read. An insult would be to ask whether he could read at all."

" _Severus!_ "

Slytherin's Head of House only bared his teeth, and said nothing.

"This part has gone on longer than I thought it would," Potter suddenly interjected, glancing nervously over her shoulder. "So, without any preliminaries, the report you're about to receive has to deal with my blood feud with Tom Riddle-"

" _Tom Riddle?_ " Cedric Diggory exclaimed, putting down his copy of the Daily Prophet. "Who _is_ that? You said you had a blood feud with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!"

"Uh, yes, about that," Potter muttered, glancing behind her again as a _new_ flock of owls appeared. "So this is another special report!" she said loudly, turning back to the Great Hall. "Commissioned it during the summer, initially - investigation concluded couple weeks ago, had him hold it 'til now - everyone, please concentrate on the content, not the messenger - paid for copies for everyone here, so don't worry about subscriptions -"

"But, Potter, we already _had_ the Daily Prophet delivery for the day!" a Ravenclaw boy protested.

"Prophet?" she shouted back as the owls came close enough for people to make out the name stamped on their deliveries. "What _Prophet_ -"

And so it was that everyone in the Great Hall had a copy of The Quibbler deposited at their place at the table.

The cover, though it should have been impossible, was _more_ shocking than the Daily Prophet's.

It displayed an aged photograph, cropped and enlarged to focus on the face of one dark-haired young man in Slytherin colors, who smiled charmingly at the viewer, as though he would like nothing more than to reach out of the frame and take their hand. Above his head, shimmering silver spelled out, in block lettering:

 **TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE**

Abruptly, the letters split and flowed around his face, rearranging themselves beneath his chin to spell:

 **I AM LORD VOLDEMORT**

A moment later, they shuddered and flowed back up to their original configuration, before repeating the process over and over again. Further down still, a subtitle hovered innocuously by his Head Boy's badge: **The Stunning Story Of The Muggle's Son Who Would Be Dark Lord**.

Pandemonium broke out in the Hall; as arguments broke out between people pointing furiously at the animated anagram and others shouting them down and telling them to not believe Quibbler lunacy, Potter shouted, " _Don't judge because it's The Quibbler! Read what it says!_"

Normally, she would have been laughed out of the room, but after the Prophet article, some were willing to believe anything. So they flipped it open, and read.

* * *

It was an article written by the editor himself, a well-known lunatic with a tendency to string together "stories" based on the flimsiest evidence and the wildest leaps of logic; here, however, his ability to chase down even the weakest connections seemed to have served him well. And, uncharacteristically for Lovegood, it cited decent references for most claims.

Tom Marvolo Riddle, according to Muggle government records, had been born at a Muggle orphanage to a mother, a "Mary P. Gaunt", who expired soon after his birth. Lovegood conjectured that this was in fact a confused Muggle transcription of "Merope Gaunt", originally of Little Hangleton, who was recorded as having married a Thomas Riddle at the village parish; said Riddle would appear back at his manor home nearby after several months' absence, now without his wife, and swearing up and down that he had been "taken in", "hypnotized", and even, once, "bewitched". Whatever had befallen him, it seemed to traumatize him for life; he would live as a shut-in with his parents until their untimely death nearly two decades later, apparently at the hands of Merope's brother.

Merope Gaunt was of the Pureblooded line of Gaunt - too Pureblooded, perhaps, as they had long since shut themselves away from common Wizarding society, ranting about "impurity" and "Muggle corruption". Rumors of inbreeding and, at last, outright incest had swirled around them, disappearing only when the Gaunts themselves had passed out of societal memory.

But they had lived on in Little Hangleton, though they had dwindled at last to Merope's father Marvolo (further evidence for a connection), Merope's brother Morfin, and Merope herself. The males had been savage and violent, according to a Department of Magical Law Enforcement report Lovegood had managed to get pulled through old connections, with the son being almost incapable of human speech, instead only emitting a strange hissing; Merope, while docile and almost Squib-like, had been malnourished, bruised, and a woman on the brink. As soon as her father and brother went to Azkaban for assaults on local Muggles, she had apparently seized whatever opportunity was available to her, eloping with Riddle - possibly by force.

Lovegood's characteristic bizarreness came out in his suggestion that Morfin, rather than possessing a speech impediment, had in fact been sneering at the investigator in Parseltongue; he pointed out that the Gaunts had claimed descent from Salazar Slytherin, and hypothesized that their inbreeding may have begun as a desperate attempt to preserve the notoriously rare trait. (A few readers, cursed with the rare ability to follow a Lovegood line of thought, groaned aloud at his emphasis that the reader should keep in mind this potential descent from Slytherin as they read on.)

Now for Tom himself. Absolutely nothing was known about his time at the orphanage. Lovegood feebly suggested that, perhaps, the young boy might have been mistreated, as some Muggleborns were, and come to hate Muggles then, but even he admitted nothing could be known for sure.

At the age of eleven, Tom would have received his Hogwarts letter, and from there his story began. Uncharacteristically for a presumed Muggleborn, he went straight into Slytherin (perhaps, Lovegood conjectured, it had sensed his ancestry and sent him there as a result - much as the Smiths, descendants of Helga Hufflepuff, had always gone into their ancestress's House). While there, _something_ ensured he was not ill-treated - bizarre, for a House infamous for its belief in blood purity. Tom had not a penny to his name, besides, and would have had neither tutoring nor training in manners - he should have been the absolute epitome of everything the aristocrats' children in Slytherin were known to disdain, and yet _something_ bought him acceptance and, later, a following.

What could a penniless half-blood have had on his side - save the gift that his line had passed down, at the cost of their respectability, looks, and ultimately sanity, until they terminated in him?

(At this point, far more readers were groaning and murmuring, for Lovegood had done all _but_ outright name Tom Riddle as Slytherin's Heir.)

It would not be Tom's only gift; he exhibited uncanny talent at every area of study to which he applied himself, so much so that even those who had just missed attending school alongside him remembered Tom Riddle immediately. Among those cited along these lines was Minerva McGonagall, who had entered two years after and yet instantly recalled 'the legend of Tom Riddle, the most brilliant student these halls had ever seen'.

Yet, strangely, Tom (whose academic accomplishments Lovegood spent the better part of a page listing) seemed to never have amounted to anything. After attempting and failing to become Defense Professor, he descended into obscurity, his name being found nowhere else than the employment rolls of Borgin and Burkes.

How could a young wizard who had accumulated a herd of followers even at Hogwarts (the picture on the cover being taken from the archives of one such wizard, who had parted ways with Riddle after graduation), who had received nothing but Outstandings on his NEWTs and acquired a Medal of Magical Merit, who had once been a favorite of the famous Horace Slughorn - how could such a young man have come to nothing?

To understand that, Lovegood claimed, one had to examine the _details_.

Who were Tom's friends at Hogwarts, the gang who would have followed him to the ends of the earth? Lestrange, Mulciber, Rosier, Travers - the fathers of the most hardened Death Eaters, those who died laughing in his service or marched proudly to Azkaban, calling their master's name! Still others, such as Avery and Nott, were familiar as the surnames of wizards bewitched by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named - _bewitched_.

It was most important to note that Merope, even as a near-Squib, had managed to successfully hold her husband for several months, until her growing pregnancy (for she would have been several months into pregnancy when the terrified Thomas Riddle escaped her grasp) put her in ill enough health for the enchantment to give way. Yes - important indeed.

But Lovegood was getting ahead of himself; it was just important, now, to note what sort of company the angelic Tom Riddle kept.

What of Slughorn, who, by all accounts, had once heralded Tom Riddle as all but the second coming of Merlin? Well, Lovegood had managed to get an appointment with the aged power broker, with assistance from a very expensive assortment of gifts; however, while Slughorn had been willing to tolerate innocuous questioning about his career, his core values, and what he considered to be his greatest achievements in life, the mere mention of Tom Riddle had made him blanch. He had refused to speak of his prior favorite, saying only brusquely that Tom had disappointed him and proven rather less of a wizard than he thought, while mentioning with increasing frequency that he had appointments elsewhere (but he had earlier sworn to Lovegood that he had cleared his schedule for that day). Asked if he was afraid, he had denied it with the fury of a man in mortal fear of his life.

At the mere mention of the anagram which graced the cover of this edition of The Quibbler, he had physically ejected a bewildered Lovegood from the house, raised defensive enchantments around his residence, and departed the country within the week. That was during the summer; he had been touring the high society parties of continental Wizarding Europe ever since.

(That little detail raised the hackles of the children of the rich and well-connected, who knew very well that Slughorn _had_ done so, with little explanation other than vague noises about old age catching up with him and "wanting to enjoy life while he still had it".)

To pursue Tom's trail beyond Hogwarts proved difficult for similar reasons. Those who remembered the name of Tom Riddle after Hogwarts tended to flinch upon hearing it; Borgin, of Borgin and Burkes, proved calmer than Slughorn, admitting after some discussion that Tom had been a very polite young man on the surface, but that he had come to dislike him more and more the longer Tom stayed on, sensing something subtly and rottenly dishonest beneath the surface. Not an uncommon trait for his employees, he had added, but something about Tom had seemed to reek of disrespect - as though he thought himself well above his employer, and indeed above everyone he had ever met. Borgin had been relieved to see him go - not least because a gradual accumulation of "disappearances", "losses", and "misplaced orders" had stopped abruptly upon Tom's resignation, and unparalleled Hogwarts record or not, _no one_ had a right to be a filthy sneak-thief while they were _his_ clerk.

Upon hearing the anagram, he had laughed uproariously for several minutes, then stopped, seemed to consider it, and hastily excused himself.

(Several older Slytherins, and a few Ravenclaws, remembered uncomfortably that Borgin had seemed a little out of sorts this summer, randomly interjecting that he was a man with _standards_ and he just couldn't excuse _anyone_ stealing from his store. "If the very Dark Lord thought he could try it, I would - I would - I would be _very put out with him!_ " Borgin had proclaimed hysterically, raising one finger high in the air, then given a strained little laugh, rushed into the back, and remained there for the rest of the day. That bizarre little incident had unnerved them even at the time, and, with this new information, they found themselves increasingly unable to maintain an interest in their meals.)

After Borgin and Burkes, the trail went dark indeed. Only wizards who had parted from Riddle's company early, and remembered him as the shining star of Slytherin, seemed willing to speak of him; those who were remembered as closer to him would not discuss him, save one who thought he might have died while traveling abroad for study (and opined "Good riddance") and another who believed he had earned tenure at the Scholomance and found some measure of peace. Both agreed that Tom had secretly studied Dark Arts at Hogwarts, as brilliant at them as he had been at all his studies, and had left the country to pursue studies he could not further in England; they had not followed, taking the excuse to break from a man who had lost the sheen of graceful and charming youth, and seemed seedier, uglier, and madder with every passing year. There their definite knowledge of him ended.

But what might one conclude from Tom's path up to that point?

His followers were shared in common with the Dark Lord. His former mentors were repulsed by him. Those who had been his peers admitted that Tom Riddle, the unparalleled talent at Defense Against The Dark Arts, had displayed equal aptitude for the Dark Arts themselves.

And where _had_ Lord Voldemort, the brilliant, powerful Parselmouth, come from? No one had seemed to know, not even his followers; had he been born from the sea-foam, perhaps? Hatched from the egg of a swan? Burst full-formed from Grindelwald's forehead?

All extremely important questions! But, alas, the Quibbler was a skeptical and inquiring newspaper, and could not indulge in flights of fancy when the _truth_ was there to be found. No - all this investigation had been to lay the groundwork for the shocking revelation from eyewitness evidence, and the truth _would_ out.

Observe that the date of Tom Riddle's Award for Special Services to the School matched up almost exactly with the end of the first Heir of Slytherin incident - a little after, but that was all.

The readers must now recall that Tom _was_ Slytherin's last descendant, likely a Parselmouth, and already a private practitioner of the Dark Arts. Who, then, should one conclude was the Heir of Slytherin?

Why, Rubeus Hagrid, groundskeeper of Hogwarts!

(It was a testament to the Quibbler's usual reputation that several readers paused at that line, genuinely wondering if Lovegood believed that, before continuing on to the next paragraph.)

At least, that was the official verdict. But, while the absurdity was manifest to someone with understanding of Tom's true nature, the authorities of that time were not half so fortunate. Tom accused the boy, who had already acquired a reputation as a cultured connoisseur of rare and fascinating creatures, and the authorities believed the brilliant prefect over the misunderstood innovator - especially when no further attacks occurred after the snapping of Hagrid's wand. Fortunately, Hagrid would go on to pursue his dreams despite this crushing setback, and become a Care of Magical Creatures expert such as Hogwarts had rarely seen - his most recent discovery being the astonishing, fantastically pyrophilic species which he had lovingly termed "Blast-Ended Skrewt".

(Yes, the students silently decided as a body, the Skrewts really _were_ creatures only The Quibbler could love.)

But Lovegood now returned to Tom. If he was indeed the Dark Lord - what had the _second_ Heir incident been? Had the Dark Lord returned to Hogwarts just to stir up trouble?

No, he'd done that the _prior_ year. But that was a subject for another issue.

Now came the unfiltered, uncensored eyewitness evidence for which The Quibbler was so beloved by its readers!

The Dark Lord had not returned in _person_ , but rather created a Dark artifact storing a memory of his teenaged self, which had at last been smuggled into Hogwarts by an unknowing dupe and unleashed upon the school. The victim had, after a personal struggle, agreed to testify (over multiple interviews, due to the strain).

The artifact, which had taken the form of a common diary, had basic capacity for communication, both physical and mental. It used these to lure the victim into its coils, then assumed control of the user, possessing the victim and puppeteering the unconscious body into carrying out its foul deeds. At last, it had grown bored with possession alone, and attempted to devour its host alive.

The victim variously described the feeling as "worse than a Dementor", "like I was bleeding to death, but all over", and "as though he'd reached inside me and was trying to tear my insides out, but couldn't quite get them through my skin". Based on accounts of Fiendfyre survivors and case studies of particularly vicious backfiring charms, Lovegood diagnosed the victim as having survived an attempt to remove the very _quintessence_ of life - something only theorized to be possible, as no successful attempts had ever been recorded.

This attempt may have come closer to success than any before it, however - the victim had lost consciousness, and the memory had acquired a semi-solid form, by the time Amaryllis Potter had entered the Chamber of Secrets and confronted him.

Laughing in her face, he revealed the origin of the name of Lord Voldemort, then attacked. He had opened the hidden chamber within the chamber, revealing the basilisk, and -

* * *

"Oh, come off it, Potter! You _can't_ expect us to believe this!"

"I can't expect you to believe which part, precisely?" the girl asked dryly.

The Ravenclaw who had spoken stabbed at the page with one finger. "You fought off a giant basilisk on your own?"

"Aren't you supposed to be the sharp ones?" she snapped. "I didn't claim to _do it on my own_. Can't you read?"

He flushed. "Oh, right, you did it with the aid of _Dumbledore's phoenix?_ " He chuckled incredulously. "And the Sword of Gryffindor just _came out of the Hat_ -"

The girl next to him tugged on his sleeve, and they held a hasty, hushed conversation in whispers. A blond boy from the Hufflepuff table laughed loudly."You don't _know_?" he asked, gesturing with a butter knife. "The Hat _can_ do that - it's supposed to be able to conjure _all_ of the Founders' relics on command, though only the Sword seems to retain the function. It was meant to help defend Hogwarts in a time of emergency -"

He winced suddenly, as though someone had kicked him under the table. "Oh, stop showing off. Not _everyone's_ Hufflepuff's descendant, Smith," a red-haired girl said irritably.

"Right," said Potter. "You know, I _knew_ people would question me on that one." She raised one hand and snapped her fingers.

There was a sudden _crack_ from the corner of the Great Hall, which the children of House-Elf owners knew to be the sound of their variant of Disapparation, and then -

A pair of _crack_ s a few seconds later, and a soft _thump_ as something twenty feet long and full of fangs was deposited on the stretch of floor between the tables.

Chairs, plates, and utensils went flying as students scrambled onto the tables to get away from it; though they looked shamefaced a bit later, it was not such an unreasonable reaction. The great beast did not _look_ very dead; only the ruined red holes where the eyes had been and the gaping wound in its skull indicated it was no longer a threat. And there were magical creatures for which such injuries would not have proved fatal.

To be fair, the king basilisk, which this resembled, would have surely died from it. However, this couldn't possibly be a king basilisk - on account of the largest on record being two feet long.

Potter walked forward calmly and squatted by the head. "Thanks, Dobby and Winky," she said to the House-Elves, one by the head and one by the tail.

"Winky is just being glad to have some use," the one at the tail said, wanly smiling, as the one at the head snapped a salute.

"Right - so you can all see here that the magic of the Chamber seems to have had a preservative effect," she commented, waving at the damaged head. "Probably how it managed not to die of old age, hibernation or not. And it really should have developed arthritis over a millennium, which I can assure you unfortunately _wasn't_ the case."

She pointed to the wound. "If we could request the removal of the Sword of Gryffindor from its case - or, if we could, get somebody to pull it from the Sorting Hat - you'd see the dimensions match up." She motioned to a Gryffindor boy who had crawled up on the table, who, after a moment of surprise, hopped off and eagerly pulled out a camera. "Thanks, Colin," she said as he snapped photographs of the damage. "Consider this revenge for your old camera."

He paled and swayed on his feet, and those of Gryffindor remembered that Colin Creevey had gotten away with mere petrification rather than death, but his camera had suffered a much less pleasant fate. From the looks of it, the realization that _this_ was the beast that had so nearly killed him had just caught up with him.

"As for me - look, you see this thing?" she asked, pulling up her sleeve and showing a pale, near-white circle of skin just above her elbow. "As the Quibbler says, _for people who bothered reading on,_ I may be the first one to settle the debate as to whether basilisk venom or phoenix tears would win." She nodded to the House-Elf by the head. "Dobby?"

Together, House-Elf and girl gingerly pried the monster's mouth open, and she gestured to the monstrous fangs. Scholars of Care of Magical Creatures, who remembered the king basilisk's fangs being described as 'delicate' and 'needle-like', were gagging. "You'll see that it's about the right circumference," she said, holding her arm closer to the mouth - albeit still at a safe remove. "And there -" She lit her wand with a _Lumos_ and pointed it inside the mouth- "-you can see the wound from the _inside_." Colin Creevey was snapping photographs compulsively, as though this were the opportunity of his life. "I think we'll be able to pass out copies of his photos afterwards. Anyone who doubts can figure out for themselves the angle at which it went in, and where the arm of the poor sap holding the sword would have been..." She grimaced. "By which, I mean me..."

There was a _bang_ from the tail; a student had been approaching it, only to be knocked back a few steps by Winky the house-Elf. "Yeah, about that," Potter said. "I'll be happy to have an inspection, but I don't want anyone getting near it right now, in case anyone gets ideas about taking bits off." An uncomfortable laugh came from more than a few students; on account of both the ban on breeding basilisks and their potent magical nature, basilisk parts were extremely rare and prized, and Potter was potentially showing off more raw material than the entire English black market had processed in decades. The only things stopping it from being an absolute fantasy come true were that the eyes were gone (for which Dumbledore's phoenix, according to the article, was to blame) and the brain was catastrophically damaged, meaning the long-coveted hope of basilisk brain large enough for analysis with present magical techniques would continue to be a pipe dream.

Still, this was either a fantastic research opportunity or an utter cash cow, depending on what Potter (for the corpse _was_ her prize, according to laws incentivizing freelance hunting of Class XXXXX creatures) wanted to do with it. Possibly both.A small discussion group broke off from Ravenclaw, and was soon joined by eccentrics from other tables, to contemplate whether, in light of the fangs' ludicrous size, whether it might be theoretically possible to craft a wand from basilisk fang...

"This is all very nice, Potter," said a seventh-year girl from Slytherin. She received some resentful glances from people awed by the sight before them, but remained unperturbed. "I suppose we have to thank you for confirming the existence of Salazar Slytherin's monster at last - even if you killed it." That got a few chuckles from her table. "But there's a more serious issue in your story."

"More serious than a twenty-foot basilisk?" Potter asked incredulously, and got a few chuckles from those gathering around the spectacle. "All right, I'll bite. What is it?"

The Slytherin girl pointed at a passage in the Quibbler beside the fanciful "artist's depiction" of the events of the Chamber (with the nameless victim conveniently slumped in a darkened corner, all identifying features being covered by shadows). "You say Tom Riddle's shade was gaining physical form - and yet he was a _memory?_ I don't blame you for getting that wrong, Potter, because it's NEWT-level material. And I suppose Lovegood might not have learned about it either, depending on what he studied. But it's _obviously_ wrong for someone who did."

Murmurs of assent from all four tables, and even Professor Flitwick was seen nodding strongly. "Can you elaborate?" Potter said, frowning. "Look, I went off of what _he_ said - I was _twelve_ , you'll excuse me if I didn't diagnose the diary myself."

Laughter. But the Slytherin girl stood fast. "You can't transform one level of - information, for lack of a better word, to another," she said. "For instance, take photographs. They look like they contain an imprint of the subject's - spirit, don't they? And they're more visually precise than portraits, aren't they? So why don't we use them instead?

"Because they're extremely crude copies. While they have minimal awareness, they are fundamentally a _snapshot_ , and cannot express emotions or actions beyond those corresponding to the exact moment at which the picture was taken.

"Portraits, on the other hand, are anchors for the imprints of departed souls colloquially known as 'ghosts'. Their advantage over natural ghost formation is that they ensure the formation of an imprint, which ordinarily occurs in less than one percent of deaths, and, by being a stable anchor created during life, dampens the emotional obsessions usually central to the existence of free-floating ghosts. Observe Nearly-Headless Nick, who centers his existence around his botched execution, or Moaning Myrtle, obsessed over her own misery-"

"Or Professor Binns-" called a wag from the Gryffindor table, and received whoops and applause from the victims of his History class.

"Indeed," said the Slytherin girl, briefly smirking. "Portraits _are_ the closest thing to a 'memory' of the departed.

"However, they are _not_ the same as their sources, as many grieving relatives have found to their greater grief. They are imprints, and fundamentally caricatures of their sources; the shallowness depends on both the skill of the portrait-maker and the condition of the source at the time of death, but it is present in all cases. They may think, reason, and remember, but they are fundamentally _not alive_ \- and they can only be _transferred_ from one vessel to another, or set free-floating - and they could no more _consume_ the life-force of a living being than could a particularly boring lecture." She took a breath. "While some vengeful ghosts, if the imprint should be particularly potent, have been noted to hasten the deaths of their targets, the case studies have shown that the life-force does indeed depart the body at an accelerated rate - but does not go into the ghost, who could no more 'solidify' than one of Professor Binns's lectures could animate and begin chasing the students out of the room, screaming pop-quizzes on the Third Goblin Rebellion."

Embittered laughter.

"Tom Riddle's _diary_ , since he was still alive, should have been at most an animated text - which many students over the years have created as a pet project while taking NEWT-level Charms." She sighed. "However, being one myself, such projects inevitably prove disappointing. While a full-time effort can create some semblance of personality, and even useful function, it's nothing more than encoding of increasingly complex rules, facts, and approximations. I'm willing to suppose that a Charms prodigy with talent at Legilimency could, with _immense_ effort, create an artifact that could even reach into someone's mind and manipulate them, and puppeteer them with sufficient precision to mimic Parseltongue.

"However, such a creation would be _strictly_ bound to the object containing the enchantments which form it. It does _not_ exist save as an illusion created by those enchantments, and it can _never_ display the complexity and moderate sentience even of a portrait, which has, as its base, the afterimage of a genuine _soul_. Take the Sorting Hat - excellent at doggerel, rapid information processing, and Legilimency; if asked to author, say, a History essay dealing with any subject _other_ than the Founders, even if it were given access to all the information available on the topic, it would be completely paralyzed. If the diary was geared to charm, possess, and ultimately unleash Slytherin's monster, its _appearance_ of sentience would have collapsed if the victim had started to inquire, say, about basic financial planning, assistance with Charms homework, or his opinions on political subjects of his era..."

"But you're just describing my cousin," one of her fellow Slytherins interjected, and got some laughs.

"Yes, but it's a strict divergence from the real _Tom Riddle_ , as described here," she said, waving at her copy of The Quibbler. "And I'm getting off-topic - my point is that a ' _memory_ ' of Tom Riddle would be nothing more than a collection of information, which could _never_ attain a true life of its own, and would have no more use for life-force than a broom would have for a poetry reading." She took a breath. "Lovegood speaks of backfiring charms - but those pull from the _caster's_ life-force, due to a failure of throttling of magical consumption, and are _not_ independent entities. Fiendfyre, too, is..." She trailed off and glanced at a Slytherin seventh-year boy, who spoke up after a moment.

"Speaking _entirely theoretically_ , Fiendfyre is an extension of the caster's soul, empowered through complicated Dark magic to assume physical form and exert its wrath upon the world, continuing to power itself to consume magic in the vicinity - but this is not counted as successful draining of quintessence, because all power thus eaten goes to powering the _Fiendfyre effect_ , and not to the caster's own reserves," he lectured. "Indeed, the caster almost always cannot regain enough control over his own soul to terminate the effect, and is often swept up in the flames of his own hatred and consumed alive. 'Fiendfyre survivors' are those who came into contact with another's Fiendfyre effect, but were pulled free before they could be wholly-"

"Yes, yes, thanks, Selwyn," she said impatiently. "Anyway, the point is that the _only_ things capable of directly 'draining life-force' are either one's own botched enchantments, or direct domination by _another soul_ , as with Fiendfyre and, if magical creatures are included, Dementors. So, unless you're claiming Tom Riddle, while _still retaining control of his body and not acting as though one Kissed,_ had actually shoved his _very soul_ into the diary-"

" _Kossoi Bezsmurten!_ "

All eyes turned toward Viktor Krum, who had gone white as a sheet. "Gesundheit?" offered a Hufflepuff boy.

" _Ne, ne, Kossoi-_ " He cleared his throat and struggled to speak. "Dark Lord," he managed. "Of old." He cleared his throat again. "He is called - how do you say - Kossoi Immortal? Kossoi Never-Dying-"

"Koschei the Deathless!" exclaimed a Ravenclaw girl, and he nodded furiously.

"Koschei the - Deathless, yes." He continued to nod furiously. "It is exactly as you say - he tore out his soul and hid it far from him, so he could not die-"

"Yes, inside a needle, inside an egg, inside a duck, inside an iron chest, buried under a green oak tree on an island," a Slytherin boy spoke up. "My grandfather was from Russia, he told me the old tales - but that was a legend, surely? There is no magic which would allow-"

"In Durmstrang seventh year, we learn more," Krum said, speaking quickly. "Not the magic itself - it is madness, we would not even know how, it has passed from living memory - but Kossoi - Koschei - was true Dark Lord - vague details of legend, yes, it is so, though it was no prince who slew him - but it is not important - so long as his soul was hidden away, he could not die-"

"I beg your pardon?" the Slytherin girl who had been speaking said incredulously. "But - I mean, this isn't the Warlock's Hairy Heart! We speak of _souls!_ We all know what happens to those whose _soul_ has been torn from their body!"

"Not if it's only a part."

That came from an older Gryffindor boy. "My family have been Curse-Breakers for generations - we've seen things you wouldn't believe," he said rapidly. "My great-grandfather once - Mr. Krum, if I could please speak to you in private -"

"I'd like to join that conversation," cut in a dark-haired Hufflepuff girl. "One of my ancestors participated in the Ekrizdis Raid - there are certain family legends of interest-"

A small group of students, about a half-dozen, soon gathered around Krum; one of them sent DO NOT DISTURB into the air in fiery letters, where it remained. While they debated in agitated whispers, other students stirred. "Potter, does this mean the Dark Lord is truly immortal?" a Slytherin boy inquired.

" _Was_ \- Koschei died when his soul did," the Slytherin with a Russian grandfather said.

"Yeah, but if it's only a part-"

"Then he'd be mortal now, unless he took the part still in his body - if he's got one - and stuffed it in something."

"Uh," said Potter, her smile noticeably strained. "About that-"

"Oh Merlin," said a Hufflepuff boy in horror, "Lovegood _wasn't_ mental when he mentioned that 'topic for another issue'-"

"Well - I don't have any evidence-"

"Potter, everyone who's ever going to believe you will believe you _right now_ ," snapped an older Ravenclaw girl, waving both crumpled copies of the Prophet and the Quibbler at the basilisk's corpse. "Stop hedging and _spill_."

Potter looked slowly around the Great Hall, her face frozen in a rictus of a smile. "Ah," she said at last, voice hesitant but clear, "so... ever wondered what Professor Quirrell was hiding beneath his turban?"

Anything else she might have said was drowned out by one great roar.

"Miss Potter-" the headmaster began, but could barely be heard. " _Miss Potter_ -"

But absolutely no one cared for what he had to say. There was such a din that almost no one could be clearly heard. One thin wail from the Slytherin table rose above the general shouting; a blond Slytherin boy had gone completely hysterical. "No, no, Pansy, you don't understand!" he screamed, batting away the desperate attempts of the girl beside him to comfort him. "I made fun of the Dark Lord's turban! I made fun of the _Dark Lord_!"

"What eez wrong weeth zees school?" Fleur Delacour demanded, standing up from her honorary position at the Ravenclaw table. "Monsters like zat run freely through your 'alls? And zees Quirrell - I am 'earing 'e was a teacher? A part of a Dark Lord's soul was teaching 'ere?" She looked about furiously. "Zees eez _tres importante_!" she screeched. "My family weel be visiting for ze Tasks! I can't ask zem to bring my leetle sister to a place like _zees_!"

"Lady, how do you think _we_ feel?" one of the Weasley twins shouted back. "We _go_ here!"

The teachers were calling for order, but no one was in much of a mood to respond. The Head of Slytherin House was not even bothering; apparently inspired by the basilisk, he seemed to be trying to kill the headmaster with his gaze alone. The old man was staring straight ahead, his expression unreadable.

At last, he rose and, with a wave of his wand, muffled the entire Great Hall. Though they still could be heard, they were much quieter, and students shouted themselves hoarse just trying to continue conversations at a normal volume. "Miss Potter," he said loudly and clearly. "Congratulations. With your childish, thoughtless antics, you have emboldened the followers of Lord Voldemort beyond their wildest dreams."

"Emboldened?" croaked a Slytherin boy as loudly as he could manage, waving the Quibbler's cover high in the air. "You think I, who can trace my line back to the Norman Conquest, would ever die for a backwater-village Muggle's son?"

There was an immediate dispute at the Slytherin table between those who still refused to believe the Quibbler and those who did; nonetheless, the point was made. The volume rose again as students took the noise-reducing spell off of each other with concerted group Finites, and soon it was back to a steady din, with shock and fear rapidly changing to incredulity and-

"You bastard!" a Hufflepuff girl screamed, jumping to her feet and pointing at the headmaster. "That sudden point donation you gave to Potter and her lot three years ago - that wasn't naked favoritism! That was _hush money_!"

That provoked a fresh explosion of indignation - at first mainly from Hufflepuff, which despised abuse of authority on principle, but then joined with equal vigor by Slytherin, who suddenly saw their way to having their seven-year House Cup streak, whose 'cruel theft' they had long resented, restored to them after all. Ravenclaw threw in with equal vehemence as they realized those four hundred points to Gryffindor two years ago had likely been of the same kind, and at last Gryffindor joined in, admitting to themselves that even two House Cups had not been worth two years of one piece or another of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named running about the school.

"You knew!" one of the members of the discussion group marked DO NOT DISTURB suddenly yelled out. "Potter told you! It says she informed you of the diary - you had to have known that was no mere _memory_!" He jabbed an accusatory finger at the headmaster. "You didn't inform the authorities, _did_ you? With _your_ senile, secretive antics, you helped conceal crucial information about the most critical secret of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!"

"If you knew he was coming back - _had_ partially returned - how _dare_ you have encouraged people to use his name!" a Gryffindor girl shouted, cheeks flushed. "Were you _trying_ to have people ready to break the Taboo, if he restored it? Maybe you could get away with it, _Dumbledore_ , but you were setting the rest of us up to _die!_ "

As a new wave of enraged roaring broke over the Great Hall, another of the discussion group broke off and went to Potter's side. "Tell us - was that the last you saw of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?" she quietly asked the (by now rather shell-shocked) girl, shaking her by the shoulder. "If so, he might be truly dead-"

Potter shook her head. "No, I've - look, I guess it sounds absurd, but I've been having dreams about him, like-"

The girl gripped Potter's shoulder harder and attempted to pull her away, only to be menaced by a cleaver-wielding House-Elf. "Dobby would like to know where you be going with Amaryllis Potter?" the House-Elf asked, waving his makeshift around with a tad too much enthusiasm.

"She may have crucial information! This is a matter of _international_ importance, if the current Dark Lord is imitating Koschei the Deathless-"

"It's fine, Dobby," Potter interrupted, "just - follow, if you want." The House-Elf conceded and, after a short gesture to the House-Elf by the basilisk's tail, disappeared with corpse in tow with a _crack_ , then returned a few seconds later, scrambling after Potter as she headed toward the discussion group.

"We need to be elsewhere," Krum said as she joined, giving a jerk of his head toward the general chaos in the Hall. "I cannot hear myself think - and we need to speak without others overhearing, should some information be, let us say, not for general hearing." There was general assent, and the group began to move out.

They were joined by a red-haired Hufflepuff girl ("My aunt's Amelia Bones, I need to convey whatever you figure out to her posthaste"), a young blonde Ravenclaw ("Luna Lovegood, Quibbler correspondent"), and a pale and terrified-looking Gryffindor girl, who gave no reason for joining. "Hey, keep out of this, this isn't a playpen-" one of the boys began gruffly, but Potter cut him off with a sharp wave of her hand.

"She knows more than any of us!" she snapped in a low voice, and the group blinked at her as one, realizing the identity of the unnamed victim.

As they headed out of the Great Hall, Potter looked over her shoulder and shook her head. "You know, I hope this proves I didn't enter the Tournament," she remarked, turning back around as a general chant went up for Dumbledore's resignation. "If I'd ever wanted attention, I could have done this earlier-"

"Yes, you have certainly found yourself much attention, Potter," Krum commented, keeping his gaze straight ahead. "If it is not asking too much, does the house of Potter have vacation houses outside of England - ones you might be thinking of visiting, for a while?"

* * *

 **Author's Note** : I may get some complaints about Xenophilius Lovegood managing to paste together Tom Riddle's past when Dumbledore said it was very difficult. However, Xenophilius is basically paging through public records and newspaper clippings, meeting with people occasionally, and working off of the Potter account for the key connection. As such, he completely missed the orphanage history, the Hephzibah Smith incident, and Riddle's interview for the Defense position.

Since there's no way for the in-story audience to know this, I'll say it here. Rita Skeeter dosed the Dursleys to the _gills_ with Veritaserum and possibly other mind-affecting potions. As such, they only have a foggy memory of a nice interview with a very understanding lady who allowed them to vent a little about their terrible, freakish niece. Vernon was suspicious when he came home and found his wife spilling her life story to a complete stranger, but one little sip of tea and he was babbling away. And, to head off the obvious question - Skeeter was taking notes with a perfectly magic-free ballpoint pen.

(She was _very_ interested to hear Amaryllis was threatening the Dursleys with the wrath of Sirius Black...)

After the disastrous end of her third year, Amaryllis looked into _any_ radical outlet that might be persuaded to start agitating for re-investigation of Sirius's case, and found The Quibbler. She began a correspondence over the summer with the kooky editor and, in light of her new dreams about Voldemort, decided that if _anyone_ might be willing to do investigation into Tom Riddle, Xenophilius Lovegood would. (The Sirius Black story is pending further investigation, as Xenophilius put even his beloved Crumple-Horned Snorkack investigations on hold while he pursued the Riddle case.) At school, she approached Ginny, who at last consented to testify about what had happened to her after a long interval of internal debate and struggle.

(While I'm giving extra-story information, here's a bit regarding the immediate future:

Draco Malfoy, as soon as the immediate chaos dissipates a little, will start loudly asking what people think the Dark Lord, should he return, might do to the poor, stupid fool who managed to lose a piece of the Dark Lord's soul. After being given reasonable estimates by his peers, he'll agree, with manic enthusiasm, that it would be completely and utterly deserved and _he_ sure wouldn't want to be anywhere near that hapless wretch... In unrelated news, over Christmas break, the Malfoys will abruptly withdraw their son from Hogwarts, mothball all business affairs in England and seal off Malfoy Manor, and depart for their estates on the continent for an unspecified length of time...)

Well, hope readers enjoyed.


End file.
